Meet the Vallon Team

Buckley Brinkman, President Vallon LLC

Mr. Brinkman is a results-driven senior executive with an established track record of over 25 years of experience as a change catalyst. As both an executive and corporate renewal consultant, he developed a talent for creating strong teams focused on customers and results. He has led organizations to success through his ability to identify and leverage inherent employee talent and align it with marketplace challenges. He recognizes the issues that companies face when motivating a diverse set of team members and aims to effectively position and drive teams toward an organization’s objectives. Through this practice, Mr. Brinkman has successfully refocused a variety of companies, creating more than $600 million of realized market value for firms that engage him.

Prior to joining Vallon, Mr. Brinkman founded Launchpad Partners, an advisory firm for mid-market companies under stress. He also served as president and chief operating officer for U.S. Music Corporation where he secured a multi-year licensing agreement with the Disney Company and increased year-over-year trade show sales by 94%.

As a the chief operating officer of Manchester Companies, Mr. Brinkman and his team were awarded the “2006 Turnaround of the Year” award for his work on an engagement that created over $325 million in realized market value.

In addition, Mr. Brinkman has provided executive leadership to companies ranging from $5 million to over $4 billion in sales, including Smurfit Stone, Rand McNally, Carta Mundi, and De La Rue Cash Systems. His results included refocusing the U.S. service operations for a $750 million secure transaction company, creating and implementing its cash handling, teller automation, and electronic voting solutions. He also revived the North American operations for the world’s largest playing card company, led the turnaround of the world’s largest trade bindery, and catalyzed the profit turnaround of a recycled paperboard mill.

Doug Ruth, Managing Partner and Founder

Mr. Ruth has over 18 years of executive operating experience in leading emerging public and private companies. Prior to founding Vallon, he was managing director at Cherry Tree Securities where he led the Technology and Information Utility Practice.

Prior to Cherry Tree, he was the CEO of ORIGIX Corp, a venture capital backed network provider of gigabit Ethernet services, where he raised over $5 million in equity.

Prior to ORIGIX, he was the Senior Vice President for Superior Consultant Holdings a publicly-held management consulting firm focused on the digital transformation of health care services. During Mr. Ruth’s tenure, Superior grew from $34 million to over $125 million in sales in two-years and met analyst expectations for eight straight quarters.  Concurrently, Mr. Ruth was the President of Superior’s Enterprise Consulting subsidiary that grew from $3 million to $19 million in sales over the same two-year period.

For eight-years, Mr. Ruth was a principal shareholder of Epic USA, an international management consulting firm until the firm was sold to a midwest-based regional accounting firm. Doug started his career with AT&T International where he was the in-country marketing consultant in Cairo, Egypt.

Mr. Ruth is an experienced fundraiser, and effective turn-around specialist. He received his BA degree in International Business from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota and attended the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

Paula J. Norbom, President Vallon LifeScience 

Paula is a senior executive with over 24 years of broad operational and financial management experience. Her expertise includes leading financial operations, successful capital raising initiatives, mergers and acquisitions, strategic and operating planning and turn-around management.

Prior to founding Vallon LifeScience, Paula served as the VP Operations and Finance for ThreeWire Inc., a clinical trial patient recruitment firm. Prior to ThreeWire, Paula played a key role in successful liquidity events at three distinct medical device companies, Restore Medical, Spine-Tech and IntraTherapeutics. Paula served as Vice President Finance and Treasurer for Restore Medical, Inc., an emerging growth medical device company. She also served as Vice President Controller for two Centerpulse-owned medical device companies, Spine-Tech and IntraTherapeutics.

Paula began her career as an independent auditor with Ernst and Young in Milwaukee, WI. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse and is a certified public accountant.

Paula is a member of the Twin Cities Financial Executives International Board of Directors and is active in several other community organizations.

Ben J. Tensing, Managing Director, Manufacturing

Recently working as an Executive for Vallon LLC, Ben completed a two and one-half year sales and dealer distribution analysis and implementation project.

Prior to working for Vallon LLC, Ben had 12 years of executive operating experience involved in turnarounds and transition management for private equity portfolio companies, in four different industries.

Experience Examples:

As President, Ben identified a significant opportunity to increase sales volume and margin, while concentrating on fewer more profitable customers. While energizing a stagnant organization, sales were increased by 12%, which exceeded the business plan by 5% and set a record 28.5% operating margin in 12 months.

While assuming a COO role in a break-even organization, developed and implemented a sales, marketing and manufacturing strategy focused on near and long term growth, reducing cost, increasing brand awareness and distribution development. Led to a ten-fold increase in sales and profitability in the first two years.

While leading a company out of bankruptcy as General Manager, Ben directed the business analysis, approach and increased sales from $19M to more than $35M and profits to $8M in 24 months. Changed the culture to a strong marketing/sales company and dramatically increased new product rollouts. Growth and profitability sustained for an additional 24 months.

Competition both foreign and domestic demanded change for two underperforming divisions. He developed a migration strategy for consolidation, reduced tooling costs for production, reduced scrap, developed new product line and eliminated one division. He directed and consolidated two divisions, improved cost structure, reduced product line, increased profitability and reduced scrap by 10 % in 24 months.

In addition, he had 17 successful years in sales, marketing and dealer distribution management for notable companies as Herman Miller, Westinghouse Electric and Knoll.

Ben is an experienced problem solver and started his career as an Architect. He received his B.S. of Architecture from Kansas State University.